Proud to BE american, given that it was achieved rather than lucked into. Those of us born here can't be proud of it. Is what I meant. Mom would certainly not enrol in any armies despite being proud to have made it out the concentration camps, out from behind the iron curtain, over the ocean before planes were common, and through the red tape of immigration at Ellis Island. That is something to be proud of. My being popped out of her a few years later is not something *I* can claim as an achievement, so I can't be proud of it having happened here.